Objective

The iSCAPE project aims to integrate and advance the control of air quality and carbon emissions in European cities in the context of climate change through the development of sustainable and passive air pollution remediation strategies, policy interventions and behavioural change initiatives. It will tackle the problem of reducing air pollution at target receptors with an innovative SME-led approach, focusing on the use of “Passive Control Systems” in urban spaces. Improvements in air quality, microclimate and behavioural aspects of urban dwellers will be achieved by applying real-world physical interventions on the urban tissue to alter ventilation rates and dispersion patterns in the selected cities assessed for future climate change scenarios and representative of different cultural&life styles in Europe. Through the approach of Living Labs the team will deploy a network of air quality and meteorological sensors (both stationary and mobile) and evaluate through analysis and a suite of up-to-date numerical modelling the benefits expected from the interventions on a neighbourhood and city-wide scale for several aspects ranging from quantification of pollutant concentration to exposure. iSCAPE encapsulates the concept of “smart cities” by promoting the use of low-cost sensors, engaging citizens in the use of alternative solution processes to environmental problems. iSCAPE will support sustainable urban development by promoting the sharing of results with policy-makers and planners using local test-cases, and providing scientific evidence ready-to-use solutions potentially leading to real-time operational interventions. This integrated approach will include the development and assessment of a framework aimed at changing the mobility behaviour of people by studying processes and dynamics that lead to more resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, by bringing together theory from urban planning, public policy, urban and environmental sociology and urban geography.

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Living Labs engage citizens in urban air quality improvements

The EU-funded iSCAPE project is not only in line with the EU’s objective to improve air quality in its cities: it makes use of participative democracy principles to inform better policies and technology deployments.

The past 50 years have seen European cities adopt new pollution control policies, air quality-related regulations and remediation technologies to conform to ever more stringent standards. But even though these are welcomed improvements, the 800 000 premature deaths caused by pollution every year – in the EU alone – act as a constant reminder of the need to do more.
For members of the EU-funded iSCAPE consortium, this need doesn’t only concern public authorities. It should involve all citizens, to help inform better policies and make the most of available technologies. By leveraging passive control systems and behavioural changes, the project launched in September 2016 hoped to help achieve air pollution-free cities.
A tale of six cities
Six cities have been selected for the project’s research: Bologna, Bottrop, Dublin, Guildford, Hasselt and Vantaa. In each of these cities, the team led by Dr Francesco Pilla from University College Dublin (UCD) started by conducting a thorough and neutral assessment of existing and future challenges and opportunities for each city with respect to air quality and climate change.
“Once the possible solutions were identified, we initiated a dialogue with the citizens and relevant stakeholders of each test city through Living Labs, to assess non-technical challenges to the implementation of relevant passive control systems and behavioural interventions,” Dr Pilla explains. “Those activities are then integrated thanks to the use of sensing technologies and the development of two quality monitoring kits.”
The first, high-end monitoring kit assesses the effectiveness of the implemented solutions, which can consist of low boundary walls, trees and hedge-rows, green walls and roofs, photocatalytic coatings, urban design or road geometry. The second one, however, is perhaps the main singularity of the project: a low-cost monitoring kit to involve and educate citizens, and ultimately build a community around the global challenge of air pollution.
“As such, iSCAPE focuses on research activities. We ran air quality and meteorological simulations at various scales to pre-empt the effects and improve the impact of our solutions, as well as extensive monitoring to assess the effectiveness of these solutions. This evaluation was then complemented by simulations having a direct impact on population behaviour. These include bottom-up feedback for policymakers, which links anthropogenic urban activities to environmental models. The idea is to provide new insights into how traffic policy measures need to be designed to improve environmental quality,” says Dr Pilla.
Each city a unique case
Each of the cities running an iSCAPE Living Lab was treated differently, based on the results of the assessment phase. The project consortium identified the most pressing issues for each one and prioritised actions accordingly. For example, the priority in Bologna and Dublin was to create a ‘living lab mindset’ among relevant stakeholders. In Bottrop, the team focused on understanding the role of ‘sensors and citizens’, while in Guildford, Hasselt and Vantaa, the focus was on ‘communicating the project’ and on establishing more collaborative relationships with stakeholders, respectively.
In each city, the project team provided a bespoke practical guide for citizen engagement, while promoting a sense of ownership of the Living Lab to ensure that the interventions would outlive the project.
All in all, iSCAPE successfully provided: scientifically-validated results and evidence-based data for stakeholders; guidelines and policy recommendations; advanced sensing technologies; new ideas and promising concepts; and increased collective awareness of air pollution and its impact on city life.

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - iSCAPE (Improving the Smart Control of Air Pollution in Europe)

iSCAPE is a three-year (2016-2019) research and innovation project funded under the European Union’s H2020 programme (“Improving the Air Quality and Reducing the Carbon Footprint of European Cities”, SC5-04-2015), involving 15 partner organisations across Europe. To advance knowledge in the field of air quality, iSCAPE has brought together an interdisciplinary team of experienced researchers, public authorities, business professionals, committed NGOs, members of regulatory authorities, communities in Living Lab cities and their citizens.

The overall objective of iSCAPE is to develop an integrated strategy for air pollution control in European cities that is grounded on evidence-based analysis. The project aims to reduce urban air pollution and the negative impacts of climate change by leveraging sustainable passive control systems, behavioural change initiatives and the Living Lab approach. The passive control systems (trees, hedges, green walls, roofs, low boundary walls, photocatalytic coating, urban design) aim to affect air pollution dispersion and its exposure to the general public. The behavioural change initiatives aim to promote more sustainable behaviours and thus reduce emissions. Centred around these interventions, iSCAPE is progressing towards providing scientifically validated results and evidence-based data for urban planners and decision-makers. It has already started developing the foundation for guidelines and policy recommendations to improve the control of the air pollution and mitigation of the negative impacts of climate change. As part of the project, low-cost sensors are developed to provide alternative solutions to measure air pollution and engage citizens in tackling environmental problems. New ideas and promising concepts to tackle air pollution using the passive control systems and the behavioral change initiatives are co-created with local citizens. By advancing and integrating passive control remediation strategies, iSCAPE aims to significantly contribute to tackling air pollution, an increasing problem that cities around the world face.

To achieve iSCAPE’s objectives, Living Labs in six European cities are established (Bologna, Bottrop, Dublin, Hasselt, Guildford, Vantaa) with the aim to connect a great variety of stakeholders, facilitate collaboration and sharing of multidisciplinary knowledge and experience to advance air pollution remediation strategies and solutions. This includes the engagement of citizens that is fundamental in Living Lab activities to create value and increase the public awareness of air pollution control.

In the first eighteen months, iSCAPE delivered a variety of impactful results. First, a rigorous assessment of existing passive control systems, behavioural interventions and sensing technologies was carried out to develop guidelines for sustainable passive air pollution control in the six iSCAPE cities. In addition, interlinks between air quality and climatic variables were studied to design emission abatement strategies which also account for current and future climate scenarios in the iSCAPE cities.

Next, to ensure an inclusive development and co-creation of new ideas and concepts, a Living Lab in each iSCAPE pilot city was established. iSCAPE Living Labs have already performed a number of citizen engagement activities and have made a great progress in increasing the awareness and knowledge of air pollution and its impact for healthier cities. An interactive tool to engage citizens in the air pollution debate was also developed with the aim to communicate complex science in a simplest manner to public and facilitate citizen behaviour change. Further, the methodology to assess the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the interventions in the iSCAPE cities was developed. The proposed quali-quantitative approaches enable iSCAPE to describe and quantify the impact generated by the project in addition to assessing existing policies and suggested recommendations for major air pollution sources.

This was followed by the extensive field campaigns aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of green infrastructure to reduce air pollution in Guildford (focused on hedges) and Bologna (focused on trees) in addition to the behavioural intervention study conducted in Hasselt. This study used a smartphone application developed to research citizen travel behaviour and provide suggestions on how to make their travel behaviour more environmentally friendly. A similar study will be also conducted in other iSCAPE cities. Significant efforts were also devoted to designing the field campaigns in iSCAPE test sites and their implementation is in progress.

iSCAPE has made significant progress in developing low cost sensor kits. These kits and more advanced monitoring stations were designed by following recent developments in the field of sensing technologies. Currently, these sensors are being tested and validated by the project partners in a real-life setting. In addition, an easy to use web platform “Virtual Living Lab” was developed to encourage citizen science and share the tools developed by the iSCAPE project with Living Lab communities.

iSCAPE partners have also made great efforts to increase the project visibility. This has been achieved by participating in a great number of events, sharing findings through a wide variety of dissemination channels, writing scientific publications, collaborating with local stakeholders and exploring synergies with other projects and initiatives. The overarching objective of this dissemination and exploitation strategy is to foster further uptake and proliferation of the outcomes and knowledge developed as part of the project, towards more impactful future results.

iSCAPE is pioneering the assessment of PCS in real-life conditions of six fully operating EU cities. The project goals and expected impacts are ambitious and beyond the state of the art. iSCAPE’s integrated approach towards improving smart control of air pollution in European cities is essential to achieve these ambitions. Project dissemination and exploitation activities in addition to extensive research will be further targeted to enhance the wider social implications.

During the rigorously- designed field campaigns, project researchers have already collected evidence-based data that goes beyond the state of the art and will be further validated by the scientific community. In addition, the review of air pollution sensing technologies was incorporated into the best practice for low cost sensing of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA UK) earlier than expected, significantly increasing visibility of the project outputs. Notably, a great number of local stakeholders (schools, science centers, local agencies) have keen interest in using the low cost sensors to facilitate citizen science and increase collective awareness and knowledge of air pollution and its impact. iSCAPE’s continuous strive for innovation and impact, and in specific the activities in the Dublin pilot, was rewarded with the second place in the Green Digital Charter competition organised by Eurocities. In addition, iSCAPE was listed as one of the 10 breakthroughs to shape Europe for the next 60 years by The EU Research & Innovation Magazine in May 2017. These achievements demonstrate the dedication of iSCAPE partners and their willingness to go the extra mile to achieve results beyond the planned.

Living Lab activities in Dublin, Ireland (June, 2017)

Assessing green barriers in Guildford, UK (June 27, 2017)

Sensor testing during the field campaign in Bologna, Italy (January, 2018)

Deliverables

The report will deliver maps of high resolutions whenever possible of pollutants and greenhouse gases of the target cities to serve as a reference against which to evaluate changes. This deliverable is an output of Task 6.1.

This deliverable will describe the methodological framework to be used for assessing the socio-economic impact of iSCAPE outputs and pilot and for developing a strategic portfolio choice framework. This deliverable is an output of Task 5.5.

In order to avoid a slow start of activities a detailed work plan for the first six months will be developed during the kick-off meeting with clearly assigned tasks to all involved partners. This deliverable is an output of Task 9.1.

This document will determine how the project communicates with the outside world and how and will specifically address awareness-raising and knowledge sharing amongst the user and target groups. This will be an output of Task 8.1.

This report will present state-of-the-art of urban climate change simulations and contain the analysis of the cities in terms of AQ and CC in the various cities and their interaction. This deliverable is an output of Task 1.4.

The Virtual Living Lab platform first iteration will disseminate the findings of the project and provide real-time access to the data collected with the low-cost and high-end monitoring stations. This will be an output of Task 8.3.

D8.3 b) Virtual Living Lab platform – Second iteration due M18. This release will contain extended functionalities and content, including the interactive map and information on the sensing kits from WP3.

The high-end and low-cost monitoring stations will be developed. This deliverable is an output of Task 3.1. Sensors design is finished by M12 and field validation of the prototypes will start at the iSCAEPE living labs as part of MS4 - Development of measurement stations.